


Blotted

by worldaccordingtofangirls



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, M/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worldaccordingtofangirls/pseuds/worldaccordingtofangirls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Phillip's death, Alexander goes to tell Aaron he's moving uptown. It's more than a goodbye. </p>
<p>[Response to the prompt: "Write about something that has become obsolete." </p>
<p>Modern AU, sort of; they write for a newspaper together. Canon-compliant in the sense that it corresponds to the musical, though.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blotted

It’s been a long time since he’s seen him. He’s heard, of course, but everyone hears, because Alex has a way with words, if nothing else. Aaron doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but when the knock at his door finally comes -- weeks later, weeks with only the lines typed neat, one by one, and yet twisted in unknowable shapes to help him make sense of it all -- he knows it’s him, he knows, and something old winds deep into his veins. It chills him, the ancientness of the feeling, the way it roots itself in his body. Like it is there to stay. His hands shake as he turns the knob. 

“I’m sorry for calling so unexpectedly.” The syllables fire rapidly from his mouth. Like he had already loaded the gun, felt the weight of it in his palm, the way it pulled on all the muscles of his arm at once, and knew. Like he had already examined the trigger with intent. “But I’ll only stay a minute.” 

A way with words, if nothing else. 

“Alright,” says Aaron. “Come in.” 

Alex has already come in, of course, and he’s stalking along the shelves, eyes flitting from book to book without seeing. It’s not like him; his gaze usually travels purposefully, and Aaron’s stomach hurts -- one long, tremendous ache -- and then settles. He turns, closing the door behind him, and puts his hands in his pockets. 

“What’s the matter?” 

Alex stops pacing, but he won’t look at him. He is gazing at the floor, biting down on the knuckle of one clenched hand; the other is buried somewhere in his pocket. Gripping.

“Are you doing well?” says Aaron at last. He’s not sure if he’s just trying to sound normal or if he really wants to know; the words feel strange and square in his throat, their edges sticking against his flesh. “How is your family?” 

Aaron shakes his head once, mutedly. He moves -- takes two long strides, each one punctuated by a sickening tremor in Aaron’s chest -- to face him. Still, he doesn’t meet his eyes. He stops biting his knuckle and takes his other hand out of his pocket. Holding something. Aaron looks down.

It’s the quill and the ink. From their days in college. It started as a joke, back when they edited for the opinion desk of the Yale Daily News and Alex was so inexperienced, so abrasive and unnecessary, that Aaron made it public knowledge just how much he dreaded working with him. The kid persisted, though; he always persisted. Editor of the New York Times, for god’s sake -- or almost, at least. The quill was a gag gift, anyway, part of some sort of stupid paper-wide secret santa; it was supposed to be ironic, a quip about how print news was starting to seem as ridiculous as using a feather to keep your thoughts in order. Aaron didn’t think it was funny, but he kept it in the middle of the desk they shared -- Aaron facing one way, Alex facing another -- and one day Alex picked up the tiny pot of ink that came along with it and, with no explanation, starting marking up old papers with it.

Aaron hated it. He hated how presumptuous it was that this scrawny kid thought he had the stuff to critique everyone who had ever written for the Daily; and he hated that, when he finally broke and read one of the papers Alex had left out, his points were good. Better than good -- sensitive, insightful, original, and he hated that, too, how he cared so much about doing journalism right when most of the staff was just around to pad their resumes. But most of all he hated the way he would always forget to blot the ink when he got too excited, the way he turned yesterday’s news into a broken capillary; he hated the tiny black oceans bleeding out on the table, the keyboard, the palms of Aaron’s hands, printing out the tender flesh of his wrists for all to see. 

Weeks -- every time, it would take weeks to scrub the stains away. And somehow the darkness of the ink was mirrored in Alex’s eyes, as if some invisible current flowed between the tip of the quill and his blood, singing with the heat of it; and Aaron hated it, hated it all. 

Alex’s arms move at the elbows, pushing his hands forward; it occurs to Aaron that he is giving the quill to him. The little inkpot, too, the glass clear and empty. Aaron blinks down at them even though he really wants to shut his eyes. 

“This belongs to you,” says Alex. 

Aaron stares at him. He wants to scream -- since when has where anything belonged kept him from taking it -- but he can’t seem to move the muscles of his lips. Of course, Alex has never been able to stand silence; he breaks without needing anyone else to help him. 

“I -- we’re moving,” he adds, like it’s supposed to be an explanation. 

Really, Aaron might have known. Something finally liquefies the muscles of his face and he finds that he is able to school his eyes and nose and mouth and teeth into shapes that look calm. 

“So,” he murmurs. “You won’t be around much anymore, then.”

“No. I mean -- no, probably not.” 

Another pause, in which the reality of the situation again saps the elasticity from Aaron’s body. 

“We wanted to go somewhere quieter, you know,” Alex blurts out. “After...everything.” 

“And you won’t be taking this?” 

Alex isn’t looking at him. That’s the worst part. 

“It does belong to you.” 

Aaron feels something drop out from under him. 

“Don’t. Please don’t.” 

Alex’s face freezes at his tone, the lines around his eyes and mouths going solid, anguished. He looks tired, Aaron realizes -- so tired, and he loathes himself for the way his heart clenches with regret. But the worst part is wistful, a gentle longing; he almost wishes it was fierce like it used to be, not so old and settled. Old and settled, he realizes. So are the creases at the corners of Alex’s lips. They never looked like that before. Always so alive, too dynamic; never still. He used to hate those, too. 

So it happened without him, then. He tries to compose himself. 

“I take it you don’t need it anymore?” 

When Alex finally looks at him, he’s not ready. He needs more time; he wants to raise a hand to block his eyes, he wants to catch on fire, he wants to cry out for him to wait. But he doesn’t, and he never would. He looks at him. 

“No, I -- I don’t think I can.” 

The lines in his face have gone deep and stiff, the corners and angles of his body quiet and finally smooth, but his eyes -- his eyes are the same as they have always been, and under the full force of his gaze Aaron is struck with the sickening knowledge that they will never be different. Full and black, blacker than ink; newsprint was never enough for him, nothing was. Locked into him, Aaron wishes, just once -- a pang of longing so powerful he feels it snap him in two, the weight of it cracking his bones, his entire body rigid with it, in a way he knows he will never quite wish for anything again -- that he could see through it. The dark, living liquid of them. 

The endless drip, drip, drip onto his skin, already rubbed helplessly raw from washing. 

“Please take them,” says Alex, softly.

For the first time in his entire life, the words come to his lips without him knowing they are there. 

“Fuck you, Alexander.” 

Alex gazes at him for one moment longer. Then he turns and puts the quill and inkwell on the edge of the nearest shelf. He looks back at Aaron without really looking. He straightens the collar of his jacket. Aaron waits -- like always, waiting -- for him to speak. But for the first time in both of their lives, all he does is leave. 

Funny, that. He was always so good with words.

Aaron stands there in the silence and thinks about his empty hands, and nothing else.

**Author's Note:**

> they used to work at the yale daily news & not princeton's paper or something because i wrote this as an assignment for a fiction course at yale university 
> 
> i'm turning it in to my professor on wednesday :-)
> 
> also, i'm hamilton DIRT; i haven't loved a piece of media this much in a long time; come visit me at asslicker2012 on tumblr yikes


End file.
